


Remains

by ChristyCorr



Category: The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, Surveillance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChristyCorr/pseuds/ChristyCorr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dana closes her eyes. She shoots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wolfpacklove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfpacklove/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, wolfpacklove! I hope you enjoy this <3

“We’re talking about the agonising death of every human soul on the planet, including you. You can die with them, or you can die for them.”

Dana keeps her gaze and her aim on the woman, even as the words trickle into her brain. It’s a good point—not exactly unexpected, almost kind of poetic, after all the crap they’ve been through. Marty doesn’t seem tempted to play the martyr—which, fair. Dana herself wouldn’t mind much. It’s a shame that killing herself would only make things worse. She’s not even sure she’d care if the entire world ended tonight. It’s a pretty shitty world.

These gods, whoever they are, are sadistic enough to demand elaborate, gory rituals on the regular. Humanity’s fucked-up, but these guys? Not exactly outperforming humans on planet-tending skills, and that’s saying something.

So Dana’s not sure, is the thing. Her mind is shifting sand, and they’ve all left ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ behind so many hours ago it’s hard to even remember they exist. 

Slowly, trembling, her hand moves to point the gun at Marty instead.

“The whole world, Marty,” Dana says, but she can’t do this. She can’t.

“—is in your hands, Dana,” the woman interjects, her voice calm and reassuring. For a brief moment, Dana wonders who she is, what kind of person keeps her cool this much in the face of the apocalypse. “There’s no other way. You—“

The woman’s voice dies in a wordless gargle as a werewolf leaps from the shadows to ravage her throat. Dana shoots it once, twice, her finger light on the trigger, the relief coursing through her almost palpable. Monsters are simple to kill. 

The woman’s beyond saving, though, and the werewolf’s corpse makes a sick splatting sound as it hits her mangled remains. Dana would avert her eyes, but she’s seen so much gore tonight that it hardly registers. It’s easier to look at it than to meet Marty’s eyes and face what she almost did—what she’s still debating doing.

“Whoa,” Marty breathes out, and the ground rumbles beneath them. The gods probably aren’t happy to have lost their puppet. Priestess? Whatever. They’ll never know now. But the gods are angry, the world’s about to end, and Dana has to decide.

Marty saved her life earlier today—saved her life so many times by this point, and she’d saved him right back. Damn him: this would all have been over hours ago if he’d just let her die. But, well, he’d given her a choice instead.

If there’s no meaning in the universe anymore—if the real gods humanity’s been worshipping are all dickheads pulling strings—then there’s no point in trying to sort out the best decision, no point in figuring out what the right thing might be. The board is rigged anyway. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

“Hey, Marty,” she croaks. “Rock, paper, scissors.”

She watches understanding flash in his eyes. He gives her a grim nod, pats his coat, finds a miraculously blood-free joint, lights up. He passes it to her, and what the hell, why not? She takes a hit. It gets a little easier to take a deep breath as they continue sharing the joint; her chest unclenches, her panic gets hazier around the edges; she finally stops shaking.

They lower their hands together. Scissors. Rock. Marty smiles, kind of lopsided.

Dana closes her eyes. She shoots.

*

Ambling among the debris, she finds body parts by the truckload, blood everywhere, and the occasional survivor. They start following her like shellshocked ducklings, unable or unwilling to do anything beyond obeying simple orders. Dana doesn’t have any better ideas, so she just continues walking and collecting strays. She thinks it might be a good idea to kill them—everyone in this place sure has earned it—but there are only so many bullets in her gun. Plus, she’s exhausted. Maybe later.

A woman found barricaded behind tanks of liquid nitrogen introduces herself as Dr. Wen, and volunteers an explanation for why everyone’s trailing behind Dana: their rules state that any Virgin who conquers a scenario should be offered a leadership position, and the opportunity to make changes to the establishment. 

Dana’s not even a virgin, has no idea why everyone has decided it’s their business what kind of sex she has or hasn’t had, but it’s pointless to argue. These people think Dana has valuable contributions to offer—she can’t fathom why anyone who has suffered through this particular brand of hell would want to dedicate themselves to improving it, but Wen seems unconcerned. The Director, she says, was one such survivor. Dana thinks back on the woman’s steely determination, and kind of envies the sort of clarity and purpose that seems to come with selling your soul.

It’s hilarious to think that Dana would want to succeed her and do this for a living; it’s pretty depressing to realise that at this point she’s probably too fucked in the head to do anything else.

Someone from Operations says that the monsters have managed to escape the facility—it’s probably the only reason they’re all still alive here. Panicked reports start coming in from all over the world; news organisations are starting to get footage of several impossible creatures, which is apparently a major no-no. The death toll is rising steadily. Dana has no clue what to do, but people are staring at her, waiting for a direction to follow. She’s too tired to think, let alone make sensible choices, but apparently she’s in charge now.

Well, it was her decision to let this messed up world live to see another day. The least she can do is help with the cleanup.

*

The induction is rather anticlimactic: a flick of a knife, a blood oath, a squiggly formula in a defunct language, and that’s it. She feels a slight tug in the back of her brain, an ebbing lava pool of _something_ , like a stream of whispers that she can never quite make out or get away from. 

They never quite tell her what to do, but she can sense when They're pleased or furious; that's guidance enough. They're curious, she can tell, to see what she'll bring to the table. She is, too. She'd never given much thought to the most efficient and sadistically enjoyable ways of killing people before.

The most pressing issue is rebuilding the system, followed by damage control of the loose monsters. She does neither. Instead, she observes the effect that the monsters are having on the world at large. At first, everyone panicked; now they're beginning to adapt, with special armed forces, mass production of cutting-edge weaponry, new security systems and whatnot. There's even a new reality show. Simon Cowell's given a record deal to a banshee.

The world can't help watching the monsters, spellbound, commodifying their own terror and enjoying the hell out of it. Dana's flicking through channels one night when she realises it: the problem with humanity is that they've grown too genre-savvy for their own good. They're too used to enjoying the spectacle of horror with detachment—entertainment has trained them to be smartass viewers of their own suffering. It's time, therefore, to change the rules.

She deconstructs the ritual to its basic components. The Whore, the Athlete, the Scholar, the Fool, the Virgin: five arbitrary archetypes, so loosely defined that by this point they barely have any meaning. They have to be young. They have to die, and it has to be fun to watch. There's one detail that the Company, too busy toying with elaborate clichéd scenarios to think outside the box, had never thought to explore. Nowhere does it say that the victims have to die together. That opens a wide range of possibilities. Dana decides to start with the most obvious one: there are no monsters in the universe that can outthink the human mind with regards to cruelty. A dispassionate serial killer can put on a far better show than a unicorn on a rampage. And with the escalating violence and paranoia sweeping the globe, well, the number of killers out there has only increased. The only thing missing is an audience.

It's laughably easy to tap into the world's main CCTV hubs. It only takes some cash and a handful of talented experts to gain access to millions of other devices scattered around the globe, from garage doors to printers, webcams and home theatres. Everything's connected to the internet now, even when there's no reason whatsoever for it, so everything can be used. Mics and cameras everywhere are ready to capture humanity's endless creativity in making each other suffer. The tiny everyday aggressions, jibes and laughs and slaps, escalating to blood, rape, torture. Never again will a murder go unwitnessed. Every cry is heard, stored, savoured. Marty would’ve appreciated this. It’s humanity’s own fault, really.

All the world’s a scenario now. Every murder is a sacrifice; every killer puts on a show.

The Gods _love_ it.

*

Dana thinks it could be something like Stockholm Syndrome, because she grows kind of proud of the job she’s doing. Her think tank comes up with an algorithm that analyses everyone’s postings online to identify budding psychopaths. The Company starts tracking them from childhood, and doesn’t miss anything—sadistic pranks, torture bullying, cruelty to animals, it’s all curated and broadcast to the Old Ones across hundreds of screens. They seem to enjoy the escalation of violence, an amuse-bouche before a gourmet meal.

She gets a promotion, with a hefty bonus and a gorgeous mansion deep in the woods. Her living room has screens showing her every employee—they’re told in no uncertain terms that there’s always Someone watching, but she keeps an eye, too. Dana doesn’t try going out into the regular world, even though she could if she wanted. She’s treated to the worst of humanity 24/7; she has no wish to interact with them any further.

The number of serial killers, the exquisitely crafty ones with a true passion for it, is on the rise. Not her fault, she swears, but maybe the Ancients are rigging the game Themselves. Maybe it's just a primal human instinct telling everyone the actual end is pretty fucking nigh. And it is—they’re all living on borrowed time, she can feel it in her bones.

Her house in the woods came with a huge control panel, featuring an attractively large red button. She remembers well what it does, remembers the thrill of pressing it and watching monsters tear apart the place. It tempts her sometimes: this time, she wouldn’t just release the monsters in the US facility, but in every facility around the globe. She’d briefly wondered why something like this existed, but now it’s evident: anyone soulless enough to run this place needs the crutch of knowing they can end it all if they ever feel like it. It’s the only way of getting through each day: the comfort of knowing the end of the world is at your fingertips.

She’ll probably end up pressing it at some point. Not today.

*

It’s a dull Thursday. Nothing special about it, really, except Dana slept in a bit, and she ambles around the house not quite awake yet, looking for her thermos. Coffee at the Company is shit. She’d fire the person responsible, but it’s much better to bring her own coffee and watch as everyone winces while drinking that burnt swill. They drink it anyway, is the point.

Her silver thermos looks just like Marty’s old bong. Dana laughs about it sometimes; today it just seems pathetic, a ridiculous, sentimental tie to a long-gone world that she wouldn’t even fit into any more. If they had a do-over, she’d be the woman behind the curtain. She’d do a better job running the scenario than those incompetent idiots, obviously. Better deaths—cleaner, faster, none of that ridiculous moralistic crap. Everything’s more efficient now.

Dana’s watched the videos several times since, of course—watched them from every angle, monitoring every chem level, learned the many ways the scenario had failed. She’s got it on Blu-ray, even. Lower-level staffers trade bootlegs when they tell new recruits about her history in hushed tones. She’s made sure the copies include footage of the station destruction, and rather enjoys seeing the greenish, horrified looks on their faces for days after they watch it. She’s observed herself bleed and scream until it was just a piece of data on the infamous ’11 glitch; she’s unlearned their names. She brings it up without so much as a flinch, wields it as leverage against the few survivors and their haunted faces.

Dana’s in a crappy mood, and today, for whatever reason, the doomsday button’s looking more attractive than usual. She pictures it over coffee: the terror on her employees’ faces as they flee for their lives. They’re not trained to fight; she’s made sure of it. There are enough weapons around that they can give it a try, but not enough that they stand a chance. And she’ll be here to watch it from her leather chair, sipping some coffee.

In all her years of work, she has yet to see a single compelling reason that humanity might be worth saving. Not that the Old Ones aren’t any better—They share humanity’s passions and vices, watching their comings and goings with the vicarious pleasure of someone enjoying others acting as they wish they could. They’re humans on steroids. If They had the run of the place again, well, they would probably just kill each other, trash the whole planet, and move on to another. Maybe she could just…let them.

She eyes Marty’s gun resting on the table. Dana likes to keep it within reach, in case dramatic irony strikes.

She sets the mug down and walks to the table, gaze flickering between the gun and the button. An inexplicable excitement is building up inside her, the kind she hasn’t felt in years—today’s the day, she knows, this random, nondescript Thursday on which she just happens to feel a bit too much like ending the world. She strokes the gun, runs her fingers over the red button, the thrill of indecision making her blood race.

Dana smiles. Monsters are simple to kill.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to R, as ever, for being the most amazing beta in the history of betas, and to B and E for the hand-holding. Love you guys! Happy holidays/end of December/whatever you celebrate or don't celebrate, everyone! ♥
> 
> (If I've included anything in this fic that in phrasing or content offends or triggers anyone, please let me know and I'll immediately warn/change!)


End file.
